Two Years As A Part-Time Dad.

In college, I dated a girl who was a few years older than me. Her name was Kelly.

I was 22. She was 27.
She was recently divorced from her first husband. They'd married five years before, when she was just 22. They'd dated all through college and I got the impression that she loved him, despite the fact that he wasn't a very bright guy. (She was a pretty bright gal.) She was a drama teacher at the local high school. We met when her school rented the theater where I worked for their annual musical. She and I spent two weeks together, working on their show.

She had short hair, in what they call a "pixie" haircut. It was black and she was just getting her first bits of salt and pepper in there. She also had a broad smile and the whitest teeth I think I've ever seen on a human being. Her eyes were blue. She liked country music. And Ayn Rand books. And she got me to read "The Notebook" and showed me "Pippin" for the first time. (I cried at the finale. It resonated with where I was, in my life.)

She also had a little boy.

His name was Owen. When I knew him, he was three years old. He loved Blues Clues and throwing sticks in his backyard and playing on his mom's computer (Reader Rabbit was his game of choice.) He liked to wrestle with me and Squoosh my cheeks when I puffed them out. He was a good eater and a generally happy kid. He would disappear into his bedroom for hours, playing with his toys. And for the two years that I knew him, he slept with his mom, every single night. He was, after all, three.

I last saw him one summer in 1999. He'd just turned 4. Which would mean that he's now 10 years old, out in the world somewhere. He likely has very little memory of me, at all. (As it should be.) I can't remember the last time that I saw him.

I started out this entry to tell you two short stories about when I was around him and guessed some parenting stuff correctly. But this has sort of devolved into a sad remembrance of the kid that I once knew and will never see again. Let me leave that stuff for a bit and tell you the two stories.

A Bad Rash.
Owen was in a terrible mood.

He'd been cranky and squirmy and pouty all night long. His mom and I were curled up on the couch, watching TV with him and he didn't want any part of it. The computer didn't make him happy. He didn't want food. He was just miserable.

Earlier that evening, quite out of character for himself, he'd wet his pants. At the time, he was transitioning from diapers to big-boy underpants and Owen whizzing in the bathroom was a big deal for us all. He'd sometimes call us in and we'd watch him wee and we would both celebrate and cheer for him. Other time he would do it privately and then come share the story with us. His mom bought him some floating targets, that he could aim for. The pee stream broke them up and they would flush down, harmlessly. Truth be told, I used them once, when no one was around. Just for the fun of it.

So, Owen wetting his pants was a surprise for us all. And he was embarrassed by it too, we could tell. We attributed his foul mood to that.

He came up to us on the couch and said, "My legs are hurting," and began that really deep, committed cry that children can undertake, when they know it's okay to "let it all out." His mom pulled him up on the couch and pulled down his pants and yes, indeed, his legs were a shade of red, running down to his knees.

Well, she panicked. She was sure that he was having an allergic reaction to something. She ran and got the phone and began looking for the pediatricians number. Owen quit crying and laid on the couch with me, watching his mom have a hissy fit.

She came to me (the one non-parent in the house) deeply upset. "What do we do?" she asked. "What could he have gotten into? It's all over his legs."

"Well, didn't he pee himself a while back?" I asked.

"Yeah, but I helped him clean himself and we caught it pretty quickly."

"This looks to me, like he's just got a wee rash from the pee. Let's give him a bath and see what happens. IF it's still hurting him and still red when he gets out, we'll call the doctor." I carried him to the bathroom. A tiny, wiggly human being who was thrilled by the idea of a surprise bath.
The one thing that Owen did considerably better than peeing, was bathing. That kid had a whole host of tub toys in the bathroom. A large basket of them that he raided throughout the whole bathing process. He liked to funnel water from one cup to another. He had ships and ducks and dinosaurs and everything in between.

His mom ran his bath and I undressed him. Owen's happy habit of running around in the buff whenever he could, broke me of any shame of a naked kid. He danced around on the bathroom counter, excited about the whole deal. I lowered him in, feet first and he splashed around like a happy little duck for twenty minutes. I sat on the toilet and watched him, encouraging his happy play. His mom sat on the floor beside the bathtub, playing with him. We all had a grand time.

We got him out of the bath and toweled him down. He loved that too. And sure enough, the rash had faded and was nearly gone. To celebrate, we let him run around naked, the rest of the night. Good times for all!

This next story happened a month or two after the last one.

A Boo Boo.
I don't know where he got the idea to do it. I think Kelly had said that he'd heard about one kid at pre-school kicking another kid in the crotch (early experimentation with physical comedy, I guess), but Owen somehow got to thinking about that and how much it would hurt. Left alone for a bit at home, he made his way into the bathroom, got into the medicine cabinet and got a band-aid out. One of the bigger ones. Alone, he dropped his drawers and his big boy underpants and applied the band-aid to his tiny wiener and then walked into the TV room to show us all. He shuffled in, pants and underpants around his ankles, held up his shirt and announced, "Look what I did!"

At first, we didn't see it. Flesh colored band-aid on an already tiny target. We were looking at his belly and legs and his face, so he had to guide our attention a bit. "I have a boo boo on my ding a ling!"

We both went over to him. THIS, we had to see. His mom was concerned that he'd cut or hurt his wiener and she questioned him a bit about it. She was preoccupied with the possibility that he might've "slammed a door on his ding a ling". I assured her that was pretty unlikely. I'd survived a full 23 years without ever having that happen to me.

That lead to him telling her about the one kid ro-sham-boing the other kid at pre-school and she figured out that Owen was working pre-emptively. Band-aiding the body part that he thought was in for a kicking at pre-school. We all got a little chuckle at that.

The trouble didn't start until his mom went to remove his band-aid. You know what it feels like when you try to pull free a new band-aid from any body part, well, take that pain and put it on your most sensitive part. Oh yeah, he was crying immediately and his mom was starting to freak out.

"What if I have to cut it off?" she asked.

"Good lord, don't do that!" I exclaimed. Owen was a poor candidate for a second circumcision. "Let's give him a bath! You know what happens to band-aids in the shower, right? They come right off. Same principle. Owen, you want a bath?"

Boy, did he! He happily shuffled off to the bathroom, ahead of us, removing his t-shirt as he went along. We tailed along behind him, ready for the watershow.

Same thing as before. The water. The splashing. The toys. And me on the toilet, watching the show, mom kneeling beside him, splashing along with him. Owen didn't even noticed when she fished the band-aid out of the water, showed it to me and tossed it into the trash. He'd had no idea when it came off. Too busy exploring the scientific principles of water funneled onto a floating toy astronaut.

I was a hero for that suggestion. Owen had a happy bathtime and fell asleep early, that night. His mom was spared a screaming, horrible band-aid removal. Later, she kissed me and said, "My smart boyfriend. You saved the day. You'll make a great dad, someday."

Who knows? Maybe I will, someday. But as I get older, I think that's less and less likely to happen. Somedays that's fine. Other days, it feels like a real loss. And who is to say that I would've made a good dad. Apparently, my solution to every parenting problem is, "Put the boy in the bath." Sooner or later, that solution would've proved inadequate.

Cheers,
Mr.B